Santiniketan proposed for inclusion in Unesco heritage list, says govt

Santiniketan, the town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore spent much of his life, has been recommended for inclusion in the Unesco World Heritage List by an international advisory body, Union minister for culture and tourism G Kishan Reddy has said.

“Great news for India on the Jayanti of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Santiniketan, West Bengal has been recommended for inscription to the World Heritage List by ICOMOS, the advisory body to Unesco World Heritage Centre,” Reddy tweeted on Tuesday night.

“This furthers the vision of Hon’ble PM Shri @narendramodi to showcase our rich cultural heritage to the world. This will formally be announced in the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September, 2023,” he added.

Tagore’s 162nd birth anniversary was celebrated on Tuesday. Union home minister Amit Shah had visited his ancestral house – Jorasanko Thakurbari – in north Kolkata and also took part in a series of programmes to mark his birth anniversary.

The France-based International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is an international non-governmental organisation that comprises professionals, experts, representatives from local authorities, companies and heritage organisations and is dedicated to the conservation and enhancement of the architectural and landscape heritage around the world.

“Santiniketan, popularly known today as a university town, a hundred miles to the north of Kolkata, was originally an ashram built by Debendranath Tagore, where anyone, irrespective of caste and creed, could come and spend time meditating on the one Supreme God,” according to a description of the place on the official website of the Unesco World Heritage Centre. It later became the Nobel laureate’s home and base for activity, it said.

“Debendranath, who was father of the Poet, Rabindranath, was also known as Maharshi (which means one who is both saint and sage), was a leading figure of the Indian Renaissance,” the website said.

Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, which is Bengal’s only central university, was set up by Tagore in 1921. The Prime Minister is the chancellor of the varsity.

It was in 2010 that the Centre had first tried to get the World Heritage tag for Santiniketan. (DO WE KNOW WHY IT FAILED?) It mounted its campaign again in 2021 and a fresh dossier was prepared by the Archaeological Survey of India with the help of Visva Bharati authorities and submitted to Unesco.

While speaking at a program organised to celebrate Tagore’s birth anniversary in Kolkata, Shah had said that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was inspired by the model of education the Nobel laureate had introduced at Santiniketan.

“Tagore had amalgamated ancient Indian learning systems with modern learning techniques. He gave maximum stress to learning in one’s mother tongue. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was greatly inspired by this and incorporated them in the NEP,” he said.

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